Hector R. Ponton joined the Puerto Rico Army National Guard at age fifteen in order to attend their summer camp with his friends. Little did he know that he would spend the next thirty-six years of his life serving with the US Army, deploying to Berlin, when the Wall was being built; to Vietnam for two tours of duty; to the volatile Military Demarcation Line between North and South Korea; and to Nicaragua, when the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the Somoza regime. In Vietnam while still in his late twenties, he served as an advisor to a South Vietnamese infantry battalion; seven years later, his duties were in operations, administration, and logistics. Ponton ended his long military career as the US Army representative in the faculty at Inter-American Defense College in Washington, DC, having learned to advise and command at increasingly higher levels while still holding sentimental feelings for his troops.